Last year's Honor 9 was an award-winning affordable flagship smartphone. Its successor for 2018 has now been announced at the global launch event in London and, you guessed it, it's called the Honor 10.

Just like its predecessor, this phone provides hot specs for a decent price.

Remember that Honor is a sub-brand of Huawei, so super specs tend to drip down into new Honor handsets from similar Huawei handsets.

This time, the Honor 10 features much of the wonderment as found in the rather excellent Huawei P20. It's not identical by any means, though, so here's everything you need to know.

Honor 10 release date and price

  • UK launch event today
  • China reveal has taken place

The Honor 10 was unveiled in China in April 2018, then released on 27 April. It's priced at 2599 yuan (£290, $414) for the 64GB model, or 2999 yuan (£336, $478) for the 128GB model.

In the UK it's £399 for the 128GB model, which is the only storage version coming to Europe. It's available to buy right now.

Honor 10 design and screen

  • 5.84-inch, 19:9 aspect ratio Full HD+ (1080 x 2280 pixels) IPS LCD screen
  • Yes, there's a notch (can be hidden via software)
  • Front-facing under-glass fingerprint scanner
  • UK colours: Phantom Blue, Phantom Green (TBC), Glacier Grey, Midnight Black (TBC)
  • Global colours: Mirage Blue, Mirage Purple, Gray Gull, Magic Night Black

The first thing to note about the Honor 10 is that there is the same "notch" design at the top of the screen that we're now seeing on a lot of Android phones. We're fine with notches, to be truthful and they're hardly intrusive when they're minimal in size like this; the Honor 10's is a lot smaller than the notch on the iPhone X, for example.

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Honor

There's a definite similarity between Honor 10 and Huawei P20. Because the base of both phones have a fingerprint reader there's a notable bottom bezel. However, the fingerprint reader on the Honor 10 is underneath the screen glass, so it sits flush with the handset, without any indent like on the Huawei P20.

This new fingerprint reader is a great idea - but as we said in our Honor 10 review, it doesn't work as well as many other implementations. We're also not sure why Honor abandoned rear fingerprint readers for its flagship phones, as we prefer such a solution and think the one on the Honor 8 looked the part and worked a treat.

The Honor 10's screen is 5.84-inches in size, so it's not the same size as the Huawei P20, giving it a further point of differentiation. Well, that and the colour finishes.

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Honor

The UK finishes are Phantom Blue (which is like a two-tone blue and purple), Phantom Green (similar, but two-tone green and purple), Mignight Black and Glacier Grey. Global colours differ slightly, with Mirage Blue (same as Phantom Blue), Mirage Purple (same as Phantom Green), Magic Night Black (same as Midnight Black), and Gray Gull (same as Glacier Grey).

Honor 10 dual cameras

  • Dual camera: 16MP f/1.8 colour; 24MP f/1.8 monochrome; phase-detection autofocus
  • 24MP front-facing camera
  • AI Camera for artificial intelligence auto scene recognition

The Honor 10 also features dual cameras - as you'd expect in any Honor phone these days - with 16-megapixel colour and 24-megapixel monochrome sensors paired together. There's also a huge resolution 24MP sensor on the front, too.

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Honor

The camera's big push - as emblazoned on the rear in unnecessary white text - is the "AI camera", which deploys artificial intelligence for automatic scene recognition and image adjustment. It's a rather clever solution and can be toggled on/off after shooting a frame to see the difference.

Note the Honor experience is different to the Huawei and Leica co-engineered project in the P20 / P20 Pro. In the Honor the software layout is different, there's not the Leica endorsement, and some modes (such as the rather excellent Night mode for handheld long exposure) also lack. Still, for a £400 phone, the Honor 10 has as much camera goodness as you could want.

Honor 10 hardware and battery

  • Kirin 970 processor, 6GB/4GB RAM (likely region dependent)
  • 3.5mm headphones jack, dual SIM
  • 3,400mAh battery capacity
  • USB-C for fast-charging
  • EMUI 8.1 software

The Honor handset features HiSilicon's Kirin 970 processor, as found in the Huawei P20, which is a good performer. While the international version has a 6GB RAM option, the UK will only receive the 4GB RAM option alongside 128GB on-board storage.

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Honor

The battery is a 3,400mAh cell, paired with USB-C for fast-charging. Thankfully there's also a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is becoming something of a rarity in flagship handsets these days, and is great to see here.

Like its Huawei cousin, the Honor 10 runs the EMUI 8.1 re-skin over Google's Android operating system. It adds some fun quirks - such as knuckle gesture controls, screen colour temperature controls, and per-app battery controls.